The Rights of Non-Member State Nationals under the EU Association Agreements
Scope of the Paper
This paper will discuss the legal effects of EU Association Agreements for non EU nationals. Association agreements are international agreements and fall in the category of mixed agreements. The EU Association Agreements include: the Europe Agreements (EA), the Turkey Association Agreement, the Stabilisation and Association Agreements (SAA) and fi nally the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA). The direct effects of the Euromed Agreements and Free Trade Agreements with the ENP (European Neighbours Policy) countries will not be covered in this paper. Only the SAA with Albania will be addressed. The SAAs with Macedonia and Croatia are not covered. With regards to the PCAs, only the PCA with the Russian Federation will be analysed, excluding any other PCAs. Personal experiences have infl uenced this selection, due to my appointment as a long term Team Leader of Tacis projects in Russia (2002-2006) and of a Card Project in Albania (2007-2009). The EU Association Agreements have, as we will demonstrate hereafter, legal effects in several legal orders. These agreements establish rights and obligations after ratifi cation and in the case that accession is the objective, already before the date of accession. This phenomenon may be considered as the so-called preaccession effect of Community law. Moreover, decisions of the European Council have pre-accession effect and legal consequences in the Community legal order as well as in the national legal order of the candidate country.
*1 Оригинальная (первоначальная) публикация: European Journal of Law Reform, Volume 10, pp.339-381.